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Notes
This paper was presented as a Book Arts Press lecture during Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, 12 July 1993.
The developments summarized here are sketched more fully (with references to other accounts) in my "Classical, Biblical, and Medieval Textual Criticism and Modern Editing," Studies in Bibliography, 36 (1983), 21-68; reprinted in Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing (1990), pp. 274-321.
The term "emendation" has come to be used by editors of post-medieval literature to mean any alteration made in a copy-text by a critical editor—that is, alterations that derive from variants in other documentary texts and also alterations that originate with the editor. In the textual criticism of ancient writings, however, the term has traditionally been used to refer only to the editor's own innovations, introduced into a "recension" that resulted from an analysis of the variants in the documentary texts. This older tradition misleadingly encourages a belief that the process of recension is more objective than that of emendation (especially since the usual phrase is "conjectural emendation"), whereas the newer usage, which carries no such implication, is more realistic. This point is discussed more fully on pp. 25-27 [278-280] of the essay cited in the preceding note.
A "diplomatic" text is one that aims to reproduce without alteration the textual features of a document (primarily the words and punctuation), but not those features that can, in the particular instance, be regarded as nontextual (such as the letterforms or the page layout). See also note 7 below.
I have attempted to survey recent thinking along these lines in "Textual Criticism and Literary Sociology," SB, 44 (1991), 83-143.
The difficulty of segregating the intentions of specific individuals will vary from one instance to another; but even when the difficulty seems extreme, there is no reason not to apply informed judgment to the attempt, if one is sufficiently interested.
Some works, of course, entail the combining (or "mixing") of media: thus there are instances in which works are partially verbal and partially visual, such as shaped or concrete poetry. The dividing line between what is textual and what is nontextual in the physical features of a document must be determined separately in each instance. Features judged to be nontextual (not part of the work) are not necessarily irrelevant as evidence for reconstructing the work; indeed, all physical characteristics of a document must be scrutinized carefully by the editor, since none can be automatically ruled out as unrelated to textual considerations. Cf. note 28 below.
The fear of "eclecticism"—expressed often in the history of scholarly editing—is generally based on a failure to understand that versions (like works) cannot be found in the texts of specific documents. The most extended discussion of eclecticism in editing is Fredson Bowers's "Remarks on Eclectic Texts," Proof, 4 (1975), 31-76; reprinted in his Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing (1975), pp. 488-528.
For a fuller statement of the ideas outlined here, see my A Rationale of Textual Criticism (1989). It is surprising that some textual critics label this view of literary works "Platonic." Recognition of the intangible nature of certain media is independent of a general belief in the secondary status of the physical world. A Platonist would of course take a Platonic view of both intangible and tangible media; but the concept of intangibility is not in itself Platonic.
This preface is conveniently excerpted in Housman's Selected Prose, ed. John Carter (1961), pp. 23-44 (quotation from p. 43) and in Collected Poems and Selected Prose, ed. Christopher Ricks (1988), pp. 372-386 (quotation not included.)
McKerrow's sentence ends with an unexceptionable statement of one editorial goal: "to present those [the author's] works as he believes the author to have intended them to appear." But McKerrow's point is only to distinguish between the editor's own preferences and the editor's conclusions as to what the author's preferences were; he does not acknowledge the role that editorial judgment, especially as applied to every variant individually, might play in moving toward his chosen goal.
For Fredson Bowers's fuller analysis of McKerrow's illogical caution, see "McKerrow's Editorial Principles for Shakespeare Reconsidered," Shakespeare Quarterly, 6 (1955), 309-324. Bowers also explored some of Greg's differences from McKerrow in "McKerrow, Greg, and 'Substantive Edition,'" Library, 5th ser., 33 (1978), 83-107.
Greg's essay was first published in SB, 3 (1950-51), 19-36, and was reprinted in Greg's Collected Papers, ed. J. C. Maxwell (1966), pp. 374-391 (the latter text is cited here). The evolution of Greg's thought preceding this essay can be observed in his "McKerrow's Prolegomena Reconsidered," Review of English Studies, 17 (1941), 139-149, and in the prefaces to the first two printings of his The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare (1942, 1951).
In the original publication of the "Rationale," Greg did not indicate that in saying "what may be called the tyranny of the copy-text" he was not inventing the phrase himself; but in an added footnote, included in the 1966 republication of the essay, he attributed it to Paul Maas, who had used it in a review (Review of English Studies, 20 [1944], 76) of Greg's The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare when he was commenting on Greg's interest in preserving copy-text spelling.
In the course of one of the more incisive analyses of Greg's position, T. H. Howard-Hill distinguishes two senses of "indifferent," one referring to the inability of an editor to judge between two readings and the other referring to the equal authority of the sources from which two readings come. In the practice of editing, however, these meanings must merge, since one's judgment of a reading takes the source of the reading into account, and one's evaluation of a source involves an analysis of its readings. See his "Modern Textual Theories and the Editing of Plays," Library, 6th ser., 11 (1989), 89-115; and my discussion of it in "Textual Criticism and Literary Sociology" (note 4 above), pp. 122-128 (esp. p. 123 and footnote 60). Tom Davis, in an earlier cogent discussion of Greg's rationale, also examines the crucial matter of what it means to label a variant "indifferent," suggesting that this action reinforces "the tyranny of the copy-text"; see "The CEAA and Modern Textual Editing," Library, 5th ser., 32 (1977), 61-74 (esp. pp. 69-71), and my comments on it in "Recent Editorial Discussion and the Central Questions of Editing," SB, 34 (1981), 23-65 (esp. pp. 40-42), reprinted in Textual Criticism since Greg (1987), pp. 65-107 (esp. pp. 82-84).
For an evaluative survey of the commentary, see my Textual Criticism since Greg (1987), supplemented by the essay cited in note 4 above.
The first, a paper read before the Bibliographical Society in London, was published in the Library, 5th ser., 27 (1972), 81-115, and was reprinted in his Essays in Bibliography, Text, and Editing (1975), pp. 447-487 (the text cited here). The second paper was published in SB, 31 (1978), 90-161.
At one point (p. 459) Bowers says that before Greg the conservative position regarding the accidentals of a revised edition (essentially McKerrow's belief that they must be accepted) was "partly based on despair." Yet Greg's different recommendation—to follow the accidentals of the unrevised edition—was equally uncritical and equally a counsel of despair, founded in part—as Greg said—on "philological ignorance" (p. 377). Both positions illustrate the tendency to turn away from evaluative judgment in cases of "ignorance."
The kind of apparatus Bowers had in mind, as he made clear in his footnote 20, was one in which a list of emendations records all editorial alterations to the copy-text (accidentals as well as substantives) and a "historical collation" records only the substantive variants in the collated documents. In this system, the choice of copy-text does not affect the length of the tabulation of substantive variants (since all are recorded in one list or another), but it does change the length of the listing of accidentals unless the number of required emendations of copy-text accidentals happens to be the same in any case. Bowers recognizes, at least in the instance of a revised-edition copy-text, that the unlisted first-edition variants in accidentals are of legitimate interest to the reader; and the only explanation he offers for not noting them is that it is "usually impracticable to record in the Historical Collation all rejected accidentals as well as substantives."
He reports that in his edition of Tom Jones "proportionately far more indifferent variants are inserted from the revised edition into the first-edition copy-text than in the conservatively treated Joseph Andrews" (p. 159).
The year before, however, in Tales of Whilomville (1969), he postulated that the McClure's and Cornhill texts of "His New Mittens" radiated from Crane's manuscript. But the evidence here is not conclusive, as it is with the syndicated newspaper pieces.
See, for example, the discussion of "A Mystery of Heroism": the six newspaper texts "are technically of equal authority," but "For convenience the Philadelphia Press printing has been selected as copy-text, since it is representative. It is reprinted here, emended as necessary by reference to the other authorities when it appears to wander whether in accidentals or in substantives from the majority view" (p. lxix). In the case of "The Clan of No-Name," the conjectural textual history "places each of the preserved documents as technically equal in authority with the others in respect to the accidentals" (p. cxix); but the "usual moderate position" of the New York Herald "in respect to what may be reconstructed as the accidentals of the lost typescript makes it the most satisfactory and convenient copy-text" (p. cxxiii).
But not always: sometimes, he asserts, "only general concurrence of the following editions is in question and exactness of detail would serve no useful purpose." In those cases he introduces a plus/minus sign to signify that the majority of the newspaper texts (but not all of them) have the cited punctuation. He adds, "If it seemed important to indicate that certain of these variant texts had such and such punctuation, then the listing would do so as most convenient." (See 6: 335-336.)
In making this point (p. 466), he overstates the mechanical nature of the establishment of accidentals under Greg's rationale; as Bowers elsewhere recognizes (and as Greg himself does in the "Rationale"), copy-text accidentals, like the substantives, can be emended whenever one has a basis (necessarily involving critical judgment) for doing so.
In a footnote Bowers acknowledges, "Paradoxically, the copy-text most faithful to the reconstructed printer's-copy conceals more information in its list of emendations by recording fewer of the multiple variants than would be the case for a copy-text less faithful." His response to this problem is not satisfactory, however, because it concentrates on a "limited" recording of additional variants and does not admit the logical necessity of a full report: "How far this concealment of the evidence on which the work was edited can be rectified by including among the substantive variants of the Historical Collation the accidentals variants rejected from the other witnesses is a procedure sometimes practicable on a limited basis." An editor who pursues this idea can, Bowers believes, "start by omitting at least the unique variants—since these will have little or no claim to authority—and then progress up the scale so far as seems practicable." But this thinking is at odds with the important point made earlier that a critical approach to variants must take precedence over a merely statistical one. (In a later volume of the edition [volume 3 but published in 1976], The Third Violet and Active Service, Bowers specifically notes that "a minority, or even a single newspaper, may on some very few occasions reflect more faithfully the proof than the styled majority" [p. 332].)
See "Editorial Apparatus for Radiating Texts," Library, 5th ser., 29 (1974), 330-337; reprinted in Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing (1990), pp. 167-176 (and see my comment on p. xiii of the preface to this volume, suggesting that "the idea of editing without a copy-text, set forth briefly here in relation to one particular kind of situation, has further applications that ought to be explored"). Bowers commented on my 1974 article the following year in his "Remarks on Eclectic Texts" (see note 8 above); after saying that a copy-text selected from a group of radiating texts is "only a peg on which to hang the apparatus of variation," he refers to my "interesting proposal," which—though it seems "logically planned"—he has not "had the opportunity to test" (p. 507, footnote 26). In his 1978 essay on Greg, he repeats the idea that for radiating texts the "choice of copy-text rests on the convenience of the reader according to the ease with which he can refer to the apparatus"; then he adds, "On the other hand, if an editor chooses to adopt G. T. Tanselle's ingenious suggestions for a new kind of apparatus for radiating texts, the need for an arbitrary copy-text vanishes" (p. 149, footnote 48). (In the same footnote, Bowers suggests, without realizing it, a way in which the editorial thinking involved in a radiating-text situation could be extended to any instance of variant texts: when a statistical survey of variants determines the choice of a radiating copy-text, he says, "there should be little if any need for an editor to rely on any accidental in the copy-text simply because it occurs in the copy-text, although he may of course take that fact into account when the copy-text document seems on the whole to be relatively faithful and all other evidence is indifferent.") For a similar discussion of apparatus for radiating texts nine years later, see p. 76 of Bowers's "Mixed Texts and Multiple Authority," Text, 3 (1987), 63-90.
In "Mixed Texts and Multiple Authority" (see the preceding note), he includes in a footnote the explicit statement, "It is quite improper to use it [copy-text] as a synonym for printer's copy in general" (p. 87). For a more detailed account of this distinction, see my "The Meaning of Copy-Text: A Further Note," SB, 23 (1970), 191-196. When I submitted this piece—which is a rejoinder to Paul Baender's "The Meaning of Copy-Text" in the previous volume of SB (22 [1969], 311-318)—Bowers said that he had planned (before my piece came in) to write such a response himself.
Leonard E. Boyle calls modern editors "scribe-scholars" in "'Epistulae Venerunt Parum Dulces': The Place of Codicology in the Editing of Medieval Latin Texts," in Editing and Editors: A Retrospect, ed. Richard Landon (1988), pp. 29-46 (see p. 30). (This essay also provides a useful statement of the value of examining the physical "setting" in which a text has been transmitted; the examples are drawn from the study of early manuscripts, but the points made are equally applicable to the study of printed books—and have of course been made many times by analytical bibliographers.)
The inhibiting influence of a copy-text resembles the pressure that can also be exerted by a previous scholarly edition: Leonard Boyle has said, "the greatest threat to an editor's independence and to an unprejudiced presentation of a textual tradition is the presence of an existing edition." See "'Epistulae Venerunt Parum Dulces'" (cited in the preceding note), p. 31.
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